4 out of 5

Label: Strange Famous Records

Producer: YILA on most tracks, Various

Pip does snide pretty damn well.  Anger still sounds a little forced, and our producers have trouble moving beyond beat + pop element (strings, synth).  So when a more textured, pissed-off-and-shout song like ‘Let ‘Em Come’ plays, you sense the energy, but it’s lacking a little something.  Especially when one of the current kings of slick rage – P.O.S. – destroys the track for his verse and makes Pip’s section seem forced and Sage Francis’ bit seem like the iffy-rap that Sage Francis always does.  However, that’s just one track.  ‘Distraction Pieces,’ like the American version of ‘Angles,’ is questionably sequenced to sort of trail off at the end – not bad tracks at all, just a sudden decrease of intensity – but prior to this, it’s a slew of snide slam awesomeness, skewing more toward a hard-thumping rock backing vs. the more head-nodding beats of dan le sac and Pip’s words a bit more focused than his preachy usual self.  Even a track that’s normally a wasted space for a skit or instrumental lead-in on many hip-hop album – the intro track (in the Pip nomenclature ‘Introdiction’) – starts in the usual ‘hello my name is…’ territory before spiraling off into smile-inducing comparisons and Scroob unable to contain his rage about the lack of originality in the scene or the waywardness of the listeners, much in the same way that ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’ bounces from friendly to firey, although this time the production is more closely in sync with the acid-tinged words.  As mentioned, the album works best when it maintains a mostly even keel within a song – ‘Try Dying’ edges out ‘Domestic Silence’ for lasting impact because it just goes for the throat through and through, and similarly, ‘Soldier Boy’ is a fist-pumping head-throttling track that, while lyrically doesn’t best the interesting tale woven into ‘Death of a Journalist’, is an easier track to return to as it doesn’t contain the odd hard stop toward ‘Journalist’s’ end.  ‘The Struggle’ – though the oddest puzzle in the batch in terms of content – is perhaps the best overall song, opting for a forefront beat but with a smooth guitar hook and slide as its pop element, it allow Pip to do his speak-rap thing that flows so much more poetically than his accented and fractured spittin’.

The Kate Bush cover, ‘Feel It,’ is cute but unnecessary.

Now what’s important here is that while none of it is perfect – and that’s a feeling I have toward the Pip stuff I’ve heard, where one piece generally cuts the track shy of being a pure gem – this is still an amazing disc, instantly accessible and with so many key quotable lines you wish to remember.  By keeping the runtime slim and amping up the overall pace, ‘Distraction Pieces’ becomes the most rewarding slab of Pip work to date.  It may lack a ‘Thou Shalt Always’ ‘you’ve gotta’ hear this’ track, but chances are if you put on both albums, the one that will prick people’s ears will be this one.  And yeah, that’s ’cause it’s a bit more pummeling, but it doesn’t sacrifice the lyrical smarts whatsoever.